efkaristo -- thank you

As we have delved deeper in different Jewish cultures and history in the context of global cultures and history, Frederic Brenner's Diaspora and his discovery of the worldwide web of Jewish history and the Jewish experience has increasingly resonated with me. We learn bit by bit the stories that create a whole. Each shul and the influence of its surrounding culture and each Holocaust history help me visualize my own narrative. Moreover, these small communities, ones that haven't received recognition in all of the Jewish programming and curriculum I've experienced in the last ten years, are vibrant and whole. Their Jewish experience and identity are not lesser than our North American one simply because of size. 

 

The Salonika Jewish experience is, in my opinion, an underrated and under-told one. Why would this unusual story of such an integrated and cohesive community lack such recognition? The Salonika Jewish community consisting of Ashkenaz, Sephardi, and Romaniote Jews lived together for 600 years under Ottoman rule; Salonika was at least 50% Jewish, yet the Jews integrated into Greek society. Salonika maintained approximately 60 shuls throughout the city and even the port of Salonika closed on Shabbos. How does a community with such life, one that claimed 23 Ladino circulating newspapers, stay in the dark so long in my Jewish education? The 50,000 Jews of Salonika were then deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in spring of 1943; we visited the Holocaust museum and the deportation memorial next to the Aegean Sea.

In addition, we visited two shuls in Salonika. The first not only reflected the Sephardi decor we had observed before, with colorful stain glass and carved wooden doors, but also overwhelmingly Greek culture. Simplicity and clean lines characterized the shul; the bima stood on a marble floor and white Corinthian columns framed the Aron. Speaking of the present Salonika Jewish community, Israeli immigrant Rav Aharon described to us the small but growing Jewish population. With 1000 members of the Jewish community, a day school of about 60 kids exists. The fact that Rav Aharon lacks Greek roots or a connection intrigued me; what he did possess was commitment to sustaining Diaspora communities with deep Jewish histories. He therefore moved to Salonika with his wife and children and became associate rabbi of the shul we visited for Shabbos.

 

Visiting the shul Yad Lezikaron for Kabbalat Shabbat and Saturday morning, we constituted the majority of the shul's congregants. The service was also unlike Sephardi ones I have attended in France and the US. Not only did the trop of the Torah reading differ, but also some of the tefillot and songs included Ladino. Moreover, there was no silent davening; the chazan and the congregants chanted all of the tefillot out loud. 

Following Salonika, we visited the archeological site in Vergina of Philip II's tombs. We toured for two hours with the guide. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to connect to the lecture and the history. One major realization I've had, however, is that with the overwhelming amount of information, history, and culture to absorb, I can't and won't connect to everything. Rather, I should focus on what proves significant or meaningful to me. 

We then travelled to Ioannina, an exclusively Romaniote Jewish community. This community directly descends from the Greek Jews who lived in the Byzantine Empire. Leading us around what used to be the Jewish Quarter, our tour guide described to us the nearly 2000 Jews who lived there right before World War II. In 1944, 1860 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Fewer than 100 Jews live in Ioannina now. We visited their shul dating from at least the fourteenth century, preserved in the Bynzantine style. Revealing a large, rusted key, our tour guide unlocked the Aron to expose 360-year-old sifrei Torah written on deer parchment. 

Moreover, our tour guide led us to the deportation memorial in Ioannina, instituted by the Ioannina municipality. She emphasized her appreciation that "the memorial had not yet been vandalized," as apparently anti-Semitic (as well as general graffiti) vandalism appears commonplace in Greece. I found her gratitude ironic as she had expressed overall the good nature of the relationship between the Greeks and the  Jews beforehand. She even mentioned how Jews and Christians in Ioannina annually visited each other's places of worship as guests and friends. 

The monoliths and monasteries of Meteroa, Delphi, and Athens are still to come. 

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard